A. Field
The present invention concerns a heat exchanger, more particularly a heat exchanger for gases, which is provided with means for separating condensate from a cooled gas.
B. Related Art
Devices for cooling gases are already known which are provided with means for separating condensate from a cooled gas, whereby these means are externally provided in relation to the heat exchanger and consist, for example, of a water separator of what is called the cyclone type, which is built up of a cylinder-shaped housing.
By letting the cooled air flow tangentially in the cylinder-shaped condensate separator, the air and the drops of condensate situated therein are subjected to a centrifugal force which makes it possible to remove the drops of condensate from the air flow.
A disadvantage of such a known heat exchanger with an external condensate separator consists in that relatively large load differences are created over a known condensate separator of the cyclone type, which means in a concrete manner that this known condensate separator absorbs relatively much energy from the air flow, so that extra pumps or compression steps may have to be provided behind such a condensate separator in order to build the required air pressure and the necessary air output up again, which results in relatively high operational costs for this known condensate separator.
Other known condensate separators which are applied behind a heat exchanger separate the condensate from the air flow by means of the gravitational force as is for example the case in U.S. Pat. No. 5,268,011.
A disadvantage of such known condensate separators is that they do not work efficiently at high flow rates of the air to be treated, since in that case the drops of condensate are sucked along by the air flow. As a result, such a known condensate separator must be made relatively large in order to be able to process a preset air output, at a low flow rate of the air to be treated, which is disadvantageous in that the cost price of such a large condensate separator is relatively high.